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Lucas123 writes “The price of 2.5-in solid state drives have dropped by 3X in three years, making many of the most popular models less than $1 per gigabyte or about .74 cents per gig. Hybrid drives, which include a small amount of NAND flash cache alongside spinning disk, in contrast have reached near price parity with hard drives that hover around the .23 cents per gig. While HDDs cannot compare to SSDs in terms of IOPS generated when used in a storage array or server, it’s debatable whether they offer performance increases in a laptop significant enough that justify paying three times as much compared with a high-end a hard drive or a hybrid drive. For example, an Intel 520 Series SSD has a max sequential read speed of 456MB/sec compared to a WD Black’s 122MB/sec. The SSD boots up in 9 seconds compared to the HDD’s 21 seconds and the hybrid drive’s 12-second time. So the question becomes, should you pay three times as much for an SSD for twice the performance, or almost the same speeds when compared to a hybrid drive?”

MojoKid writes “Promise Technology recently launched the first Thunderbolt-compatible devices; the company’s Pegasus RAID R4 and R6 storage solutions can now be ordered from the Apple Store. There’s a catch, however. In order to use either storage array, one must first purchase a cable directly from Apple. The company has priced the two meter cable at $50. As it turns out, Thunderbolt uses what’s called an active cable. Inside the cable there’s a pair of Gunnum GN2033 transceivers. The GN2033 is a tiny, low power transceiver chip designed to be placed inside the connectors at either end of a Thunderbolt cable, enabling dual bidirectional 10Gb/s concurrent links over narrow-gauge copper wires. The cable’s $50 price may be justified, but it’s also a further reminder of why Thunderbolt may follow FireWire’s path into obsolescence. Apple is the only company currently selling Thunderbolt cables.”

wiredmikey writes “A hardcoded password-related security vulnerability has been discovered which apparently affects every HP MSA2000 G3, a modular large scale storage array. According to the alert, a hidden user exists that doesn’t show up in the user manager, and the password cannot be changed, creating a perfect ‘backdoor’ opportunity for an attacker to gain access to potentially sensitive information stored on the device, as well as systems it is connected to.”